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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Recap of My 2011 Genealogy Goals

Last Christmas, I went to lunch with The Family Curator and we got to talking about genealogy goals. In the end, we each came up with three goals for the new year and made a buddy pact to follow through with our plans. I blogged about mine here. Denise blogged about hers here.

We each came up with 1 research goal, 1 writing goal and 1 organizational goal.

Research goal: determine the name of my maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother. Everyone has 16 great-great grandparents, and I only knew 15 of mine. This goal was a tad scary because I had to cross the pond and research Austria and Hungary. I am pleased to say that I accomplished this goal. I was also able to tell my own grandmother the name of her grandmother. It was very rewarding.

Organizational goal: get all the stuff in my notebooks scanned. What is the opposite of finished? Because that's where I ended up with this goal. I had good intentions, but we got a new printer/scanner and it hates me. Also, my professional life really picked up in the last half of the year, and that's when my scanning was penciled in. I decided getting paid to do genealogy was better.

So there you go. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

To be perfectly honest, the thought of researching Hungarian records was way scarier than writing an e-book. I did both! Woo-hoo!

So what about you? Did you meet your 2011 goals? Are you interested in a new set for 2012?

You know I have a new set of goals for 2012 and they'll be published soon, so why don't you join me?

11 comments:

I remember what fun it was when I was able to tell my mother about her maternal grandfather's family that he had left behind in Germany. He never talked about them at all. In the days just before he died he mumbled something about "Fritz" and his family thought he was remembering a pet dog. I found out that Fritz was his brother and that he was one of nine children. I found all this out because of a contact I made online. My contact mentioned a researcher in my g-grandfather's hometown and I emailed the contact to see if the other man had an email address so I could contact him. Within a few weeks the other fellow sent me a bunch of family information. More followed later. I'm still amazed. Sometimes the littlest things lead to big discoveries.

You only knew 15 huh? Yep, you are getting my *blank stare* right now!! :) Congratulations on the book. I think for most people that would be a life-long goal and you did it in 1 year! That's fantastic!

If there's one thing I learned this year it's that some things have to be considered a work in progress. Scanning, filing, shredding -- all of those fall into that work in progress category. They will always be there, since there is always more to scan, file, shred, etc. So you tackled the two biggest goals of the year and they are HUGE accomplishments. Congrats!! This makes me want to set my own genealogical goals for 2012. :-)